TA Capacity Planning and Headcount Modeling with Craig Fisher
Podcast Overview
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Eric Guidice Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very exciting episode of the Headcount Experts today. We're joined by Craig Fisher, a true heavyweight in the talent acquisition space. He's the founder of TalentNet Media, creator of Talentnet Live—one of the largest recruiting conferences in the Southwest—and he's led marketing for Allegis, scaling Fortune 500 enterprises. He has built recruiting frameworks that have been adopted by Microsoft, Toyota, and LinkedIn. He is a global keynote speaker and the best-selling author of multiple books, including Hiring Humans, which I just read before this podcast. He has been featured in publications like The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and The Economist. Currently, he serves as the head of talent acquisition operations for Rosendin, a 12,000-person employee-owned electrical contracting giant that I have to assume is going through a run of it right now with all the data center builds. Today we are talking not only about Craig and his background, but also continuing our conversation from the last podcast about using headcount data in annual planning. Welcome to the podcast, Craig.
Craig Fisher Thank you, glad to be here. Good to see you fellas.
Eric Guidice Well, Chris and I have been doing the Headcount Experts podcast for a few years now. I think we've officially turned one. We have been diving into a number of different topics to show the world how headcount data can be used to improve talent acquisition. Given your ability to translate TA concepts into readable, digestible information, we want to do the same thing with the headcount data set.
Annual headcount planning is upon us, as Q4 is right around the corner as of this recording. Before we dive into that, tell us a bit about yourself. You have a very interesting background spanning sales, marketing within recruiting, and TA ops. How did you get to where you are now, what brought you to Rosendin, and what is the story of your career?
Craig Fisher I come from a sales background, but I graduated from the University of Oklahoma with an advertising and marketing degree. Basically, everything I do is about attraction and inbound strategy. When I made the switch from healthcare sales to recruiting physicians in the mid-nineties, it was still essentially a sales job. Recruiting is sales, marketing, and advertising.
I worked in every position imaginable across staffing, executive search, firm ownership, and eventually as a talent acquisition leader for large enterprises. Along the way, I started a consulting business solving recruiting problems and guiding digital transformation for major global companies. Allegis then brought me in to lead a brand turnaround for CA Technologies. That went well, so Allegis made me their head of marketing to do that across their portfolio.
When Allegis stopped pursuing new business during COVID in 2020, I took the opportunity to return to consulting. Eventually, Rosendin and I found each other around March 1st of this year. I am relatively new, which fits the rest of the scaling TA and HR team as the company doubles in size year over year. I had been tracking Rosendin on LinkedIn, and when I saw their talent organization growing, I jumped at the opportunity.
Eric Guidice Having a background in sales and marketing provides a great perspective because sales data translates directly into the TA environment and the business departments TA supports. On our last episode, Chris and I talked about working backward from the productivity date: when does someone need to be in seat and fully productive to contribute to the business?
You just wrapped up a major project this week with Workday Renew. Tell us about that project, how the decision was made, and how the business benefits.
Craig Fisher A couple of years ago, Rosendin saw me speak at an HR technology conference while I was engaged with JPMorgan Chase. Rosendin was in the middle of implementing Workday. As a fast-growing employee-owned business, the initial Workday rollout was standard, but many features were never turned on—a common issue with enterprise software.
Fast forward to recently: Rosendin engaged Workday consultants for a Workday Renew project to overhaul our applicant tracking system, establish clear process swim lanes, improve reporting, and create a single source of truth for talent data.
I was brought in to shepherd that project and lead recruiting operations, which covers coordinators, employer branding, project management, and recruiting technology. Recruiting operations has emerged over the last six or seven years to maintain end-to-end visibility across the talent workflow and onboarding. Workday Renew was a major success for our team.
Chris Mannion With the rise of AI tools and custom internal builds, many teams build point solutions for requisition tracking or hiring manager tools. Did the question of building your own ATS or HRIS ever come up, and what is currently missing from your tech stack?
Craig Fisher There are definitely missing elements, so we use specialized spot tools as workarounds. A perfect ATS simply does not exist. Even modern AI-first hybrid ATS platforms require customization and supplementary tools.
We discussed building an in-house CRM, which is straightforward to build using low-code tools like Jotform. However, when enterprise data security is a priority, building a bulletproof, secure custom tool internally is difficult. That is why established platforms like Workday win out.
Chris Mannion Offloading risk to an established platform makes complete sense. Looking at your inbound marketing approach and the projected labor shortage for skilled electrical contractors, how are you thinking about talent attraction mechanisms?
Craig Fisher Sales concepts apply directly here. In sales, you track call and email conversion rates. You need seven to eight touchpoints to show up in a candidate's peripheral vision before they engage with your brand.
Our inbound strategy ensures we show up in the right places with compelling messaging so candidates respond to outreach or click job ads. For example, the talent pool for electrical construction supervisors in Northern California is small and close-knit. By challenging strict on-site requirements and introducing remote flexibility where possible, we significantly expanded our pool of qualified candidates.
Chris Mannion That relates directly to the build, buy, or adapt model. Instead of just hiring externally (buying) or developing internally over years (building), adapting job requirements expands the available talent pool immediately. How is that working out, and what are the long-term challenges?
Craig Fisher Rosendin utilizes all three approaches. We have robust internship and apprenticeship programs, and we are launching Rosendin University to build high school and university talent pipelines.
We also partner closely with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union to contract craft professionals for major projects. A key goal is staying engaged with union workers between projects, helping them maintain certifications, and bringing them back for future projects. Tracking non-employee union craft labor outside of Workday is complex, but crucial for workforce planning.
Chris Mannion Planning three to five years out for skilled labor and leadership succession is challenging. How do you build leadership buy-in and present data for long-term talent supply chain strategies?
Craig Fisher Many union craft professionals eventually transition into full-time corporate project management and leadership roles at Rosendin. As a 107-year-old company, Rosendin excels at long-term planning across new sectors like solar, mobile energy, and data centers.
When our employee stock ownership valuation jumped significantly this year, it created new equity wealth across our workforce. That means a segment of senior leadership will eventually retire. We actively evaluate capacity planning, internal mobility, and hiring our successors to prepare the next generation of leadership.
Eric Guidice How does that planned attrition integrate into your TA headcount planning formulas?
Craig Fisher For our TA team of 35 supporting 3,500 corporate employees and 12,000 total workers, we use explicit capacity models to determine if we are under- or over-staffed relative to hiring goals.
We evaluate recruiter capacity against agency placement fees. The formula is:
(Hires x Agency Fee Percentage) - Recruiter Total Cost = Annual Savings Per Recruiter.
For context, a recruiter making 8 hires a year covers their cost by saving $10K in agency fees. At an industry average of 48 hires per year, a recruiter saves the business $800,000 in agency fees, assuming a $100K recruiter salary and a 20% agency fee.
Eric Guidice How do you account for shifts between planned hiring goals and actual execution during the year?
Craig Fisher
We use a specific capacity delta formula:
(Year-End Target - Current Headcount) + (Current Headcount x Attrition Percentage) = Total Hires Needed.
Total Hires Needed / (Hires Per Month x Months Remaining) = Recruiters Required.
Recruiters Required - Current TA Staff = Headcount Delta.
Eric Guidice Where did these capacity formulas originate?
Craig Fisher My colleague Ramin Fatahi and I developed and refined these mathematical models using spreadsheets and digital whiteboards based on our enterprise TA experience.
Chris Mannion How do you factor time-to-hire and operational bottlenecks into these capacity expectations?
Craig Fisher We review headcount forecasts on a rolling six-month basis and reconcile monthly with finance.
Field roles often require instant sourcing fulfillment, while specialized executive roles can take longer. We constantly audit for process bottlenecks, such as approval delays in Workday when hiring managers or HRBPs go on PTO without delegating approval steps. Addressing these administrative bottlenecks directly reduces time-to-fill.
Chris Mannion A CHRO I once worked for said her primary operational goal was "quiet"—when no complaints reach leadership, you know the talent supply chain is operating efficiently.
Eric Guidice What specific data points are you gathering in Q4 to inform next year's headcount plan?
Craig Fisher When I joined, contingent agency usage was managed decentrally across regional offices. I analyzed vendor invoices to centralize visibility into agency spend and headcount.
In Q4, we are consolidating data across regions regarding who is being hired, job board source of hire, and contractor management to ensure unified governance entering next year.
Eric Guidice How do you present this data to executive leadership and the board?
Craig Fisher We built executive dashboards inside Workday that aggregate regional monthly reports for senior leadership and our board of directors.
At Rosendin, every employee undergoes route training to master project estimation math—calculating labor hours, materials, and safety requirements. Applying that same mathematical rigor to talent operations ensures accurate workforce planning and maintains our industry-leading safety record.
Eric Guidice Combining headcount data with operational project data provides incredible insights into safety and project execution. What is your top advice for TA leaders managing regional or decentralized field operations?
Craig Fisher Centralize governance and oversight. When I consulted for DaVita Healthcare, individual regions ran localized recruitment ads. Because national ad budgets were unmonitored centrally, funds were exhausted on the East Coast before reaching regional clinics in the West. Centralized oversight prevents wasted spend and balances regional hiring demands.
Eric Guidice Let's move to our Content Reactions segment, analyzing trending industry topics.
First, Jen Minor (former compensation leader at Unisys, Keurig Dr Pepper, and HP) posted asking where compensation experts have gone, noting that AI calculators are replacing fundamental job evaluation and market analysis skills. What is your take on AI in compensation?
Craig Fisher I agree with her concerns. You cannot rely on a single automated calculator or raw BLS data set. Compensation requires deep regional and role nuance. Human judgment is required to interpret market benchmarks correctly.
Chris Mannion I built an AI tool to track compensation benchmarks, but AI models require properly structured job architecture inputs. Comparing a Manager title at one company to a VP at another requires human domain expertise; otherwise, automated outputs lead to mispriced offers.
Craig Fisher Exactly. At an ESOP like Rosendin, a Senior Manager role often carries the operational scope of a Director or VP in a traditional public enterprise.
Eric Guidice Our second topic comes from Anthony Onesto regarding the legal liability surrounding AI hiring tools and discrimination, specifically referencing the Mobley v. Workday litigation. What are your thoughts on AI vendor compliance and bias?
Craig Fisher Vendor audit certifications remain vague, making it difficult to guarantee immunity from class-action claims. Because of this, many employers are turning off automated candidate scoring algorithms. I prefer transparent, rule-based knockout questions and decision trees over black-box AI scoring.
Chris Mannion Regulators focus on whether a hiring process produces disparate impact—such as age discrimination against candidates over 40. If an organization uses an automated tool to reject candidates without being able to explain the underlying criteria, it assumes massive legal risk.
Craig Fisher This mirrors the legal debates we saw with HireVue video interview algorithms years ago. Algorithmic transparency remains essential.
Eric Guidice Craig, what upcoming events or initiatives do you have planned?
Craig Fisher I will be at Workday Rising, and I am hosting the TalentNet Live conference on November 6th at the Caliber Collision headquarters in DFW. Details are available at talenttexas.com.
Chris Mannion I will be presenting at the SIOP Leading Edge Consortium in Baltimore on applying S&OP supply chain principles to operational headcount planning.
Craig Fisher If you see Juan Bettencourt there, give him my regards.
Chris Mannion Will do!
Eric Guidice Thank you for joining us, Craig, and thank you all for tuning in to the Headcount Experts podcast. See you next month!
Craig Fisher Thanks, fellas.
How to use headcount data to build defensible TA production models
Craig Fisher, founder of TalentNet Media and Head of Talent Acquisition Operations at Rosendin, joins the podcast to analyze the integration of headcount data, capacity modeling, and enterprise system optimization within talent acquisition. The primary focus of this episode centers on applying mathematical formulas to TA capacity planning, aligning rolling headcount forecasts with corporate finance, and navigating AI bias and HR technology implementation challenges.
What Craig Fisher talks about on the headcount experts
Recruiting is a queueing system: Open requisitions and candidates represent work waiting for recruiter time and attention.
High process variability: Recruitment involves constant, unpredictable variables, such as candidate availability, interview scheduling delays, hiring manager travel, and top-of-funnel sourcing fluctuations.
The 80% threshold: When recruiters are workload-planned at around 80% capacity, the remaining 20% acts as a buffer to absorb operational friction without stalling requisitions.
Exponential delays: Pushing recruiter utilization past 80% eliminates this buffer. Because there is no room to flex, even minor delays compound across every open role, causing time-to-fill to explode by 3x to 5x.
Craig’s take on operational headcount planning
Operational headcount planning for talent acquisition is a data-driven method that calculates required recruiting bandwidth by evaluating total target hires, projected organizational attrition, and individual recruiter production rates over a designated timeframe.
Strategic Importance to Recruiting, HR, and Talent: Operational capacity planning removes subjective workload allocations, prevents recruiter burnout from volume over-utilization, pinpoints administrative bottlenecks within ATS approval stages, and provides defensible data when requesting additional talent acquisition headcount.
Strategic Importance to Finance: Capacity modeling validates the return on investment of internal talent acquisition teams relative to third-party agency spend, aligns payroll expectations with realistic hiring speeds, and establishes oversight over external contingent labor expenses.
A Takeaway for TA Leaders: Talent acquisition leadership must transition from static annual planning to monthly rolling reconciliations with corporate finance while continually auditing administrative workflow stages to eliminate hiring bottlenecks.
Headcount Content Creator Reactions
Jen Miner | Compensation Leader, Keurig Dr. Pepper, Unysis- Where have all the compensation experts gone?
Jen discusses the risks of substituting specialized compensation roles with automated AI calculators, highlighting that automated data sources lack essential human context regarding job leveling across organizational structures, geographic nuances, and total rewards packages.
Anthony Onesto | AI & People Solutions - Three questions to ask your AI Vendor (Workday Lawsuit)
Anthony evaluates the legal liabilities associated with AI-driven screening tools, noting that employers bear ultimate responsibility for discriminatory outcomes and recommending structured decision-tree knockout questions over unexplainable AI scoring algorithms.